YOUNG MASTER. I’m obviously too much in love with you . . . that’s why . . . I can’t cope with this . . .

YOUNG WIFE. . . .

YOUNG MASTER. You know, these last few days, I’ve been going crazy. I thought this might happen.

YOUNG WIFE. Don’t worry about it.

YOUNG MASTER. No, of course not. It’s perfectly normal, obviously, when . . .

YOUNG WIFE. Don’t . . . you’re working yourself up. Just calm down . . .

YOUNG MASTER. Have you read Stendhal?

YOUNG WIFE. What?

YOUNG MASTER. Stendhal’s On Love?

YOUNG WIFE. Why d’you ask?

YOUNG MASTER. Well, there’s a story in it – which says a lot.

YOUNG WIFE. What sort of story?

YOUNG MASTER. Well, a group of cavalry officers are chatting together.

YOUNG WIFE. And?

YOUNG MASTER. They’re talking about their love lives. And each one says that the woman he loved the most . . . most passionately, you know . . . she made him . . . well, with her he . . . well, to cut a long story short, it’s the same for them as it was with me, just now.

YOUNG WIFE. I see.

YOUNG MASTER. It’s very common. But that’s not all. One of them says . . . that this never happened to him. But Stendhal says he was a terrible bragger.

YOUNG WIFE. Oh.

YOUNG MASTER. But it’s irritating. That’s the silly thing. Even though it really doesn’t matter.

YOUNG WIFE. Of course it doesn’t. But actually, you know . . . you did promise to be good.

YOUNG MASTER. Don’t tease me. It doesn’t help, you know.

YOUNG WIFE. I’m not. It’s very interesting what Stendhal says. I thought it only happened with much older men . . . or with very . . . you know, men who’d lived it up.

YOUNG MASTER. What?! It’s got nothing to do with that. By the way, I forgot Stendhal’s best story. One of these cavalry officers says he once spent three whole nights . . . or was it six, I can’t remember . . . with a woman he’d wanted for weeks – you know, désirée – and all they did, the whole night long, was cry for joy . . . both of them.

YOUNG WIFE. Both of them?

YOUNG MASTER. Yes. Are you surprised? To me, that’s so understandable – precisely because they’re in love.

YOUNG WIFE. But there must be lots of people who don’t cry.

YOUNG MASTER (irritable). Obviously . . . That was just an extreme case.

YOUNG WIFE. I see. I thought Stendhal meant that all cavalry officers cry in that situation.

YOUNG MASTER. Now you’re just making fun of me again.

YOUNG WIFE. Not at all. Do grow up, Alfred.

YOUNG MASTER. Well, it gets on my nerves. And I get the impression you’re thinking about it the whole time. It’s making me embarrassed.

YOUNG WIFE. I’m not thinking about it at all.

YOUNG MASTER. I know. If only I knew that you loved me.

YOUNG WIFE. What else can I do?